This is a work in process - I'm updating this as I go along with various builds. (Note that this means that responses from earlier in the thread's life may refer to things not currently found... sorry folks.) It's morphed a lot over time, until now it's barely recognizable as a dual-bow archer who hides behind Temporal Hounds, firing arrows that create Warden duplicates using Warden's Call to trigger Demon Seed and Arcane Combat Earthen Missiles, which in turn fire Lightning Bolts from a Mana Coiled, TK wielded staff. My hope is it'll lead me to my first Madness win once it's ready, but I've had that hope before... (e: Too much fun stuff in this build to play Madness, Hounds don’t hold up. Will try Insanity RL, but should be fairly easy given Cathbald’s Hounds playthrough.). Regardless, I think it’s great fun to play, fluidly switching back and forth between missiles and melee while everything explodes.

Credit for ideas: I can't remember who told me about the Warden's Call proccing Arcane Combat, from there it wasn't much of a leap to add in steamsaws and Demon Seeds and to use the Wardens as a workaround for mana limitations. Demonic Strength lifted from the Arcanewarden guide.

How does it work?

If you’re experienced at Tome you can skip over this part, but because it’s not intuitively obvious what’s happening mechanically, here are a list of the core combo pieces with explanations of why it works:

- Steamsaws count as both weapons and shields for talent purposes. Harvesting Demon Seeds requires a shield or steamsaw, but the Demon Seeds slotted in Steamsaws count as weapon seeds. This allows you to slot a weapon seed in each hand, plus a third through the Mindslayer-based Telekinetic Grasp and Beyond the Flesh skills. (The Mindslayer skills also let you dual-wield bows.)- Many demon seeds fire off offensive spells when you hit someone in melee. Flame Imp, your guaranteed first drop, fires bolts of flame at up to 3-5 enemies within sight, but if a closer enemy is blocking LOS to those enemies it will get hit by all of them. Rather than multiple seeds giving separate instances of lower level skills, they combine additively - so if you have 3 Flame Imp seeds each giving you +2 Flame Bolts, you end up with a single level 6 Flame Bolt skill that has a chance to trigger on every attack. (It seems like all the skill-based Demon Seeds max out at level 7, btw) - Bow and Blade Threading talents let you switch as a free action between dual weapons and bows when using an attack skill. This helps you switch over into melee mode when enemies get close without missing a turn, and also lets you shut off Osmotic Shield as a free action by tapping Shoot and then cancelling the shot. While the main focus of the build is firing arrows, if your Hounds go down and you need more defense you have significantly better options in melee (Osmotic Shield, Blade Warding, on melee-hit Vim generation to power both Osmotic Shield and Abyssal Shield from your demon rings). - Early on in the game, you’ll use whatever your best weapon is as your TK wielded weapon. When you unlock Tinkers, you’ll switch to a staff in your TK slot and equip it with a Mana Coil, a Tinker that has a chance to fire a Lightning spell at an enemy each time they are hit by one of your spells. At the same level you’ll equip your bows with tinkers to increase their damage - Arcane Combat has a chance to trigger an spell attack (in this case, Earthen Missiles, which at max level hits 3 separate times) any time you hit in melee. This does not take an action, but does cost mana.- Warden’s Call has a chance, up to once/round, to create a temporary melee attacking copy of you when you shoot someone with an arrow, or create a bow shooting version of you when you hit someone in melee. This can be with attack/bump attack/shoot, or with other offensive skills (such as Bow or Blade Threading skills). This offers excellent damage and allows you to use melee only procs from range, but the core purpose of its inclusion is as a workaround for the mana costs of Arcane Combat (which your copy pays rather than you).- Flexible Combat gives you a chance to get an extra unarmed melee hit whenever you hit someone in melee, and unlocks offensive glove abilities, many of which count as spells.- All damage you and your copies do has a chance to trigger Seal Fate once per round when it’s up, increasing the duration of negative statuses on the enemy. It’s a little hard to test, given how many procs it throws around, but you and your warden should count as separate individuals, each with a separate number of max procs per round. - This build also runs Temporal Hounds, which are quite strong. In conjunction with Bow Threading, you can shoot arrows through your allies without harming them or stopping the arrow, while being protected from enemies that require line of effect to hit you. Note that you probably want to teleport your hounds to a space in front of your enemy, rather than clicking directly on them, both to both incoming damage and to leave room behind them for your called Wardens.

Other benefits of the build

- Spellpower is boosted by Hardened Core, Arcane Cunning, Demonic Blood, PES, and your mind-carried staff, making procs base power quite strong. (Don’t forget to switch out your staff’s bonus type to fire early game or physical late game. Note that you can’t use the Command Staff skill while TK wielding a staff, so be sure to take some downtime in a safe place to swap it in and Command it to whatever damage type you’re doing most - Solid defenses, especially in melee. Osmosis Shield, Hardened Core, Reshape Weapon/Armor, Blade Warding, Thick Skin, massive armor, dual steamsaws (which have + armor and defense), Abyssal Shield, Webs of Fate.- Strong and constant heals. Passive heals from Suffuse Life, active heals from Realign & Surge of Power- Excellent status clears from Realign & Fiery Cleansing.- If you're trapped and can't get away, you have solid melee options with Warp Blade, Blade Shear, Thread Walk, Thread the Needle, and Demon Seed. (Note: Blink Blade can be risky unless you’ve quick-handed out your procs and turned off Arcane Combat, it is possible to port right into your own procs and asplode.) - Safety and convenience of archery - avoid melee attacks, hide behind hounds (be sure to teleport them between you and your opponent rather than placing them on top of the opponent, you really want that line of effect blocked), can reserve mobility options for escape rather than gap closing. Also, I tend to blow myself up semi-frequently with Flame Bolts and Earthen Missiles when using them in melee - sometimes the bolt will start on me but not hit its target in the same turn and I won’t pay attention, step forward, and die. Distance is much, much safer given my short attention span.

Stats: Try not to invest at all in Dex - once you max out Resonant Focus you can mind-wield a gem in order to equip bows and arrows, and you won’t actually be using Dex as a combat stat due to Beyond the Flesh. Otherwise, requirements for talents, then Magic>Str>Cunning (till 100% crit or max)>Will. (You want to max out Magic even though you’ll hit deep Spellpower diminishing returns in order to get the maximum benefit from your Hounds and Arcane Destruction, which scale off Magic rather than spellpower.)

Prodigies: PES, Flexible Combat (get training dummies asap at 30, so you can spike them for a ton of damage to unlock PES)

I’ve played a lot of builds where there are too many priorities too early and you want everything at once. This build has a relatively easy skilling early game - you don’t need Magical Combat until 20, so you mostly just build really basic TW skills and your Hounds and then start building your Demonologist skills.

This looks like it could be good. I recommend getting a staff (or other item) with +mana on spell crit, which combos very well with Stone Missiles since it can trigger up to 3 times per cast. Since it will also trigger from the Fire Imp (mainhand), that should cover all your mana needs once you get a good spell crit chance.

Every time you kill all foes on the screen, hit "Z" to auto-explore. If you cannot auto-explore, it usually means that your fireball is flying on the way. So you can block or do something else to protect yourself.

Make sure you stop the auto-explore so you won't get in touch tens of unique monsters.

I do appreciate the thought, but it wasn’t as often a post-combat thing (although, yes, sometimes that too ) as something that was happening back when the build was relying on Saw Wheels as a closer. It would come off of cooldown and the orky voice in the back of my head would be like “you’re dead now, sucka!,” I’d activate my wheels and then I charge forward into my own fireball cluster and BUM BUM BUUUUUM i’m dead. Less often I would find myself in a situation where I felt I had to move because of one incoming projectile/hostile environment on the space I was in but I didn’t have non-Flame-Bolt spaces to step into. The first of these, at least, doesn’t happen much in the current build because I’m happy to stay back and shoot (with Bow Threading’s super-sweet allied- & self-friendly arrows), and the second is somewhat mitigated thus far (fingers crossed) by packing a couple teleport talents. It seems like either I’m bonkers lucky or Blink Blade doesn’t screw me by putting my second jump into the path of my own fireball. I have not done extensive testing of the offensive uses of Thread Walk shots to see if I can get blown apart by projectiles from my Called Wardens or whether something in the code prevents it, preferring to use Thread Walk as an escape over a gap closer.

I tend to use “rest until everything is cooled down” over autoexplore post combat anyway, I dunno why but sometimes talents don’t fully cool down for me before autoexplore. Also not always off “rest until everything is cooled down” but at least then I can always hit it again (sometimes with a time-filler talent like track to make it go in faster increments). Noticed it most in other builds with Timeless, not sure why.

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